Those who rest 
in peace, have 
permanent residency 
in perfection, where 
unchecked power 
can no longer 
hurt them. 

I know so. 

At least, 
I'd prefer to 
believe so.

Legitimate resistance 
is priceless 
because there's heart 
with action behind them. 

Concerned lip service 
is worthless 
because there's only words 
without either behind them.

When today stops feeling like history.
When everyday doesn't feel like an echo
of that day. When your finger no longer
hesitates pressing the first letter key
of their name. When you're not excited
to sleep because the only space to see
one another is in grief poisoned dreams.
When it's no longer a relief to retreat
into dream. When you accept it's okay
to stop waiting for the one you can't see.
When you move on from passive language
in conversations about what happened.
When you feel relief at the lack of guilt
when it's time to create new memories.
When you've made peace with the fact
that you're going to have to be the one 
to remember it all for the both of you.

That keeps the past in good company.

Living for yourself breathes new life 
and light into a dark present. Growing 
into the person you were always meant 
to become, fills all those holes left behind
by Strife robbing Life of every good bond.

This gives your future a new companion.

Today, the rising sun and falling rain commune.
The sun juggles several batons of golden rays.
The rain floods the sky with silver spotlights.
It's a pastoral confluence between two
forces of nature that I'd say rivals
the celestial unknown they boarder.
An iridescent duet between two 
phenomena. Unshakeable 
and unmovable. 
Just another morning
for these unusual suspects
as they drag the day out of bed.
Yet an unexpected audience
to watch the brilliant flow
of water and light color
the sky and burn away
the dismal nightfall.

Heroes collect moral victories
as chaos grows hegemonic.
Villains consolidate power
as the law is bloodletted
and suspended in limbo.

This is the lone constant
in which life imitates art.

Walking through my home some days
feels like stumbling into new corners
of discovery but it's just areas I've been
avoiding because they're all landmines
of memory and misery. Since someone
recreated to be revisited in your head,
over and over, will only ever be seen
in a dead field full of stones. Finally,
every place with one less shadow
feels like stepping on dud after dud
and that room can just be empty
without waiting for answers
to questions that died 
the day that news reached you
and nothing was the same. Now,
those haunted spaces feel exorcised.
Nothing but cobwebs. So old. So unattended.
Collecting more dust than gravity gathers stars.
A room without the one I can never see again
would stalk me deep into my dreams.
Now it stirs nothing from me
and that is a relief. 
And yet I wonder
if it means I'm moving on
or leaving an important part
of my life to be nothing
but a footnote in my history.
Acceptance is agonizing but respectful.
Grieving is cathartic and respectful.
Feeling nothing is a cold betrayal.
If the cost of moving on is forgetting
then let my heart remember
until its final beat.

Tyrants stage empty rebellions
against shadows cast by delusion.
A temper tantrum at a national stage
over a world that never was and people
that will not yield. Have you ever tried
to bend an iron bar with your hands.
Now imagine trying a billion times.

That's a kind of insanity 
that's always funny to see
play out throughout history,
until you see all the blood
and ashes of innocents
left in its wake.

Just at the edge of morning
was the departure of rain.
With a storm shrinking
in the distance and melting 
into the dying night's horizon,
blueberry fog smothers the city.
A bruised blue. Dark and rotting 
like a deathwish offered by a witch
in a forest that sets off every alarm
bell in your stomach. Still I dare
to wonder: within a blind space
would I find an open hand
or an outstretched claw?
One is an invitation
to dance. Another,
an advantage
to tear into
my back.
Which
is which?
Life provides
endless surprise
to anyone willing
and stagnation in stasis
to everyone hesitant 
to opportunity.
So why not?
I have plenty of scars
on my back so what's another?
I have all the time to learn 
yet another dance 
so let's 
trace steps.

In times of mourning,
I chase every shadow
belonging to no one
outside of a casket.
I claw at every memory
for a sign of what could
have been different
by divine intervention
or a deep dive into fire.
Daydreaming endlessly
inside of myself for hours
until I make myself believe
that maybe it could be years.
Like ripping the last page
of a story apart, until nothing 
but black letters remain, 
rearranging them does 
not extend the plot
but It's the closest
we can get to 
changing
the ending.  

The more things change,
with a Tyrant at the helm
of a throne made of shadows
cast by clouds on a clear day,
the more they become worse.
Doomsayers begrudge the loss
of the perfect yesterday
that never existed. Chaos 
weavers foretell the price
of the golden tomorrow
to be any and every person
looking in from the outside.
The inside hemorrhages more.
The outside has an endless crowd
that stretches farther than a lightyear.
Each day the Tyrant grows lonelier 
but the chopping block has a glut
of all of us. A Tyrant's appetite
for chaos can never be satiated.
It is bottomless. Eternally starving.
You would be better off pleading
towards a tornado's sense of mercy.

Many years ago when there was a hole in the sky 
that stretched to space and allowed the sun 
to get more than up close and personal 
with its light, humanity came together 
to solve that issue 
and protect the planet we live on 
and take so much from. 
It was one of the few times 
we collectively gave anything back to the earth.
Unfortunately it may remain the last time.
Today, Winter feels harsher and longer. 
Spring rarely gets out of bed. 
Summer has become a foreboding alarm 
we love to pretend is silent. 
Autumn remains the worst to live a life 
but the best to plan a funeral. 
Now we've just decided 
that the best time to do something 
is when the clock runs out on the planet. 
After that we're just praying 
it won't be that bad 
even when nothing will be left 
to fight over or do 
but tear each other apart.

Today Spring broke out of her shell, 
spread her wings over the city, 
and soothed Nature's spirit 
with a duet of dancing birds 
and wind orchestras. 
A quiet breeze twists
around dandelion seeds 
from a place around the corner 
that feels far away 
in the sense that it's a stranger 
in my mind but familiar 
to my heart. 
It's a picturesque 
collaboration 
of the glassy eye 
pure blue Spring 
that feels like 
Norman Rockwell 
and God 
came together 
to complete 
just for me.

It seems every day the world 
is subjected to nothing 
but brimstone and fire. 
When one crack is patched 
and smoothed over, 
a hole is then discovered 
but we've run out of cement. 
When one fire is extinguished, 
smoke is rising elsewhere 
far in the distance 
but we've run out of water. 
Chaos is not something to become 
numb to and yet it's become 
a slow burn we're watching 
devour and degrade 
every aspect of our lives 
like a flame disappears 
a sheet of paper 
from the outside in 
until only a spec of ash remains. 
It feels like being a frog 
under anesthesia 
on top of a gas stove's burner 
at full blast.

The city extinguishes 
another day 
under an onyx sky.
A sky so empty, 
it resembles a void 
that even a blackhole 
would destroy itself 
trying to get away from. 

Deeper than nothing, 
the thought of falling 
and getting lost within 
a place so endless 
used to be the unlimited 
adrenaline shot 
to my imagination.

Now I understand 
such a space could 
hold everything.

So if I could give it all 
those dark things 
from within me, 
the nagging worries 
and heavy memories, 
then I would find 
a good night's rest 
and the void finds
matching companions.

Like everyone else,
the void desires 
company.

The rain has become 
our worst assassin. 
Swift without discretion. 
When dead clouds, 
the color drained from them 
like air escapes a balloon, 
cut the daylight short 
and drop the curtain on the sun, 
it is assured what will happen 
more than when gas is thrown on fire.

Successful without humility. 
April rain doesn't need to come back 
to the scene of the crime 
because it never left. 
Every part of the city becomes 
tainted in a crushing grey 
that was engineered to be 
as depressing as possible 
and then placed at the center 
of a nuclear meltdown, 
but just before it dies, decides 
our city will be the hostage 
that watches its slow rot. 

Now its corpse keeps the streets 
clear of people. Now all I hear 
are solitary cars prowling the city 
like when every romcom's climax 
has its main character wander 
in the rain without an umbrella. 

Coldness without calculation. 
All the days and words I burned 
brooding and pining for Spring 
only for it to skinwalk Winter 
to the point snow flurries play 
peekaboo just before April fades. 
My expectation has been made 
Swiss cheese from being locked 
in an iron maiden of discontent. 
Ran through and bloodletted 
by fear granted confirmation.

Spring craves Winter 
and has settled 
for us.

One late April morning, 
the sky was buried 
in purple clouds so long
that I would have gotten lost 
if I tried to find any space 
for the horizon to breathe.
An illustrious kind of purple 
that blooms when sunlight graces 
an eggplant's skin at every angle. 
The regal kind of purple 
that a monarch only has 
their innumerable silk capes 
spun in its grand image. 
A purple so beautiful 
that I understand why 
it's my mother's favorite color. 
So much so, she wears it 
at every family gathering. 
Then there was a point 
where more and more 
there were less of us 
as the funerals kept piling up 
and now I can't remember 
the last gathering 
I saw her in purple 
instead of black.

The sun hung in the sky listlessly. Behind clouds 
thick enough that I would have mistaken 
to originate from a smoke stack factory tower 
if I didn't know any better. Clean clouds 
from an adolescent spring 
to serve as the sun's bed covers. 
As if the sun decided to show up today 
but in a 'let's get this day over with' attitude. 
Still sunlight bursts through a thin crevice in the clouds 
that reminded me of the golden moisture on mash potatoes 
fresh from the microwave. A familiar warmth 
enveloped me the longer I looked within. 
A tear in the sky that felt like catching a glimpse of angels 
peeking out from behind the curtain of heaven.

Grief feels like a being the conductor 
of a train that's gone off the rails 
and over a cliff into an abyss 
that you cannot see any end to. 
It feels like Death's punishment 
for not appreciating life 
as if it hasn't been the one 
taking everything from us.

Your enemies don't want your honor. 
They want your destruction. 
So why make it easy for them? 
Make yourself their greatest challenge. 
Always make yourself someone to be earned.

On a spring day, minutes before a rainstorm, 
the sky still held the life of baby blue eyes. 
Albeit with a fading hue. The oncoming 
rainclouds were sprouting from the horizon 
and dragging a hazy grey aura 
to poison the remaining clear day peace. 
Like an exploding ink cartridge, 
set off by a fatal gravitational force, 
spilling over fresh copy paper. 
The brilliant azure sky against 
these ashen sterile rainclouds 
looked like the aftermath of a slow fire 
that failed to destroy a canvas 
brought to life by paint and ambition. 
Nibbling and picking away at a single edge 
with only this clash of oppositional tones 
as evidence of its haphazard attempt. 
A back alley doctor's attempt at splicing 
two planes of existence together. 
This phenomenon made me ponder 
if I could fly high enough and reach 
wherever, to be on the outside looking in, 
how many mistakes would have to be corrected 
just make everything feel right once again? 
Would it be like hitting undo so many times 
until you're told there's no more steps to reverse 
but you still see the errors? Or would it be better 
to throw the whole thing out 
and start over at a blank white screen 
with a single blinking vertical line? 
Alas, life only gives us one draft. 
So I steady myself and get ready 
to embrace the oncoming storm.